Americans Rodgers, Snedeker Tied for Torrey Pines Lead

Patrick Rodgers shot a 5-under 67 to race up the leaderboard and tie Brandt Snedeker for first place at the end of 54 holes at the Farmers Insurance Open in California on Saturday.

Snedeker is 18 holes away from becoming just the fourth back-to-back champion at Torrey Pines. He also won the event in 2012.

Rodgers must be getting some good mojo from former roommate Justin Thomas, who recently won back-to-back events and set a new PGA record for lowest score under par at the Sony Open in Hawaii.

“I can’t sit here and say it hasn’t been hard at times,” Rodgers said. “Obviously, these are my best friends so I’m happy every time they have success. But on a personal level, I mean, those are the guys that I’ve always competed with and so it definitely tests my patience to see them have success and it’s incredibly motivating.”

Like Thomas and Jordan Spieth, Rodgers is from the graduating high school class of 2011 in the US. Amazingly, so are C.T. Pan of Tawai and Ollie Schniederjans.